Cricket South Africa had agreed, in principle, to extend head coach Ottis Gibson’s contract until 2021.

Late last week, though, CSA announced Gibson’s tenure has not been extended. Convenor of selectors Linda Zondi, assistant coach Malibongwe Maketa, fielding coach Justin Ontong, batting coach Dale Benkenstein and spin bowling coach Claude Henderson also haven’t been retained.

CSA, meanwhile, has restructured and dissolved the positions of head coach and team manager. They’ve introduced a team director post, which will be filled later this year.

‘I spoke to Ottis and told him that I would like to suggest to the CSA board that they look at his contract for a possible extension. Ottis responded by saying he would look at being employed until, more or less, 2021 – and that’s what I should suggest to the board,” said CSA chief executive officer Thabang Moroe.

‘I did suggest that to the board and they deliberated on it. They said to me, “We are agreeing that you can go ahead and extend Ottis’ contract.” This was subject to them agreeing to key changes in his contract – part of that being eminent persons group (transformation requirements), communication and performance.

‘We went back to the coach and communicated this to the coach. He said he could not immediately agree until he saw what his contract looked like. It’s no secret and has been well documented in the media that Ottis was not happy with the new structure we wanted to put in place.’

This week, too, batsman Faf du Plessis was retained as Test captain and fast bowler Dale Steyn ended a prolific Test career. Steyn has retired from the longest format of the international game, but will remain available for ODI and T20I selection.

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